Supercomputing 15 Recap and the Top 10 (err) 11 Reasons Why We Love HPC and the SC Conference

Supercomputing 15 Recap and the Top 10 (err) 11 Reasons Why We Love HPC and the SC Conference

We are all home from Austin, likely catching up on our sleep, but also still have a lingering of that happy glow from a good week. Below are the Top 10 things I liked best about the SC15 conference. Take a read and let me know what your Top 10 (or 1 or 2) things were!

Student Cluster Competition: Team Diablo from Tsinghua University in China took the top prize. This was their third win after winning at ISC15 and Asia Supercomputing Community Student Conference. Come on – students getting excited about HPC and clusters!

DDN’s coffee: Thank you, thank you, thank you. It was good and much needed.

HPCwire’s Readers Choice Awards: Tom Tabor – are you tired from running around the show floor and having your picture taken with the winners? ;). Check out the list of winners; these are chosen by you and the editor’s of HPCwire. These are the people, companies, and organizations to watch!

StartupHPC: Once again a very informative workshop with great speakers. Brent Gorda closed it out with a very informative and inspiring talk on entrepreneurship. If you missed it and want to hear the presentations, contact the StartupHPC group.

Intel “Future of Music” demo: I have to admit – I didn’t try it, but it was the buzz heard around the show floor. HPC has enabled “digital music creation unbound by the laws of physics.” Yet another really cool application of HPC technology.

Diversity Events: Becoming more numerous and well attended! The Women in HPC workshop “Changing the Face of HPC” on Friday afternoon had over 65 attendees. The Women in HPC: Pathways and Roadblocks BoF was over capacity. Intel did a couple of events including a lovely happy hour on the lawn at The Fairmont. Data Vortex did a couple of events. If you wanted to interact with the women in HPC and learn about diversity, there was no shortage of opportunities.

More on Diversity: I am excited to announce that I will be working with the SC16 team on the Diverse HPC Workforce Conversations have started, so stay tuned!

The Parties: Yes, I can’t talk about SC without talking about the parties. I didn’t hit all the parties that were on my calendar, but the parties I did get to were in awesome venues with good food and great music.

The Weather: The weather was amazing, well, once it stopped raining. Anyone else get woken up by the torrential rains Tuesday morning? Once that passed, we couldn’t have asked for nicer days.

The Venue: I love Austin! The show floor was very walk-able and I felt I could see exhibits and get around very easily. Once outside the convention center, the city is very walkable and has lots of options for great food and entertaining.

The HPC Community and Friends: I am never disappointed by this community and the friends I’ve made over the years. Great seeing you all!

Ok – I have 11. I couldn’t help myself. J What were your top 10 – I’d love to hear. Have a great holiday and see you at ISC or next years SC!